A Harris County jury sentenced Duwane Shackelford to life in prison on Sunday for raping Marlecia Price, a client he trained as her personal trainer, at a southeast Houston motel in 2021. It took five years, two trials, and relentless public advocacy from Price before the case finally reached a resolution.
Price told ABC13 Houston that leaving the emergency room on October 18, 2021, she vowed not to be silenced. Reporter Pooja Lodhia's account details how Shackelford's first trial, held in November 2025, ended in a hung jury before the case returned to court and a jury ultimately delivered the life sentence. Price has said it took five years, a lot of tears, work and perseverance to get to this point.
A Five-Year Fight Through the Courts
Price has said the assault caused trauma and nightmares that lingered long after the attack. Her case took five years to reach trial, a timeline that reflects broader struggles within Harris County's system for prosecuting sexual assault cases. She has said the culture needs to change in how communities interact with victims and survivors, a message she has repeated publicly as her own case dragged on.
Price's advocacy predates the verdict. At a January 2024 press conference marking the release of Harris County's inaugural Sexual Assault Response Team report, she described navigating the criminal justice system as “walking nude and exposed down a long hallway paved in thorn bushes,” according to Click2Houston. That same report, covered by Hoodline in prior local coverage, found that only 12% of sexual assault charges filed in Harris County between January 2022 and August 2023 resulted in a conviction.
A Repeat Offender Facing Enhanced Penalties
Shackelford was previously convicted of sexual assault in Harris County's 263rd District Court in March 2008 and was sentenced to nine years in state prison, according to federal court records filed with GovInfo. Under Texas Penal Code Section 22.011, sexual assault is generally a second-degree felony carrying two to 20 years in prison, but repeat felony convictions can elevate penalties to life imprisonment under the state's habitual-offender enhancement statute, Section 12.42, as explained by legal reference site FindLaw. That enhancement gave prosecutors the authority to seek the life sentence a jury ultimately handed down.
Statewide Numbers Show Low Arrest and Clearance Rates
Price's long wait unfolded against a backdrop of statistics showing how rarely sexual assault cases in Texas result in arrests at all. Texas Department of Public Safety data show that less than 6% of reported sexual assaults led to arrests in 2025, and that sexual-assault clearance rates have hovered around 15% statewide. So far in 2026, the clearance rate stands at 8%, though DPS statistics also indicate that about one-third of cases that are cleared do lead to an arrest.
Those numbers echo findings from Harris County's own SART report, which the Houston Area Women's Center helped produce. According to the Houston Area Women's Center, 3,779 sexual assaults were officially reported to law enforcement in Harris County in 2021 alone, a figure advocates believe represents less than 10% of actual assaults due to widespread underreporting driven by victim mistrust and fear of retaliation. A statewide prevalence study from the University of Texas at Austin found that roughly 6.3 million Texans — about a third of the state's adult population — have experienced some form of sexual assault in their lifetime, per Click2Houston's reporting on the study.
Local Agencies Respond With Staffing Increases
The scale of the backlog has been tied directly to staffing shortfalls. The Harris County Sheriff's Office received 1,107 sexual offense reports in 2022 but investigated only about 169 of them, roughly 15%, due to critical staffing shortages in its adult sex crimes unit, according to the Neal Davis Law Firm. Since then, the Sheriff's Office has increased that unit from six to 12 members, while the Harris County District Attorney's Office has grown its sex crimes unit from five to nine members.
The pressure on local law enforcement extends beyond Harris County's unincorporated areas. In February 2024, the Houston Police Department revealed that more than 4,000 adult sexual assault incident reports had been suspended over an eight-year period using an internal “lack of personnel” code without full investigation, a disclosure reported by the Houston Chronicle that prompted citywide audits and public outcry from victim advocacy groups.
Where Survivors Can Find Support
The Harris County Sexual Assault Response Team, formed in 2021, was created to standardize survivor care and prosecution protocols across law enforcement, prosecutors, medical providers, and advocacy groups. The Houston Area Women's Center offers survivors help navigating the legal system and keeps counselors on call 24/7. Survivors seeking support can reach the center at 1-800-256-0661.
